Hearst Gets Into the E-Reader Game

Mac Slocum
February 27, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Hearst Corp. is developing its own wireless e-reader that may debut this year. From Fortune:

According to industry insiders, Hearst, which publishes magazines ranging from Cosmopolitan to Esquire and newspapers including the financially imperiled San Francisco Chronicle, has developed a wireless e-reader with a large-format screen suited to the reading and advertising requirements of newspapers and magazines. The device and underlying technology, which other publishers will be allowed to adapt, is likely to debut this year.

The larger screen size will put the Hearst reader in the same class as devices from Plastic Logic and iRex.

Fortune says Hearst isn't discussing product specs, but the company has a longtime association with E Ink. Last September, Esquire published the first E Ink magazine cover.

Related Stories:

• What Does Esquire's E Ink Cover Mean for Print Publishing?
• France Telecom E-Reader Includes Subscriptions
• What Would Your Ideal E-Reader Look Like?

Video: Android meets Eink

Andrew Savikas
February 13, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Keeping with the "labs" theme for recent posts, via a tweet from George Walkley:

Lots of talk about devices at TOC - now just saw this, Android + e-ink https://vimeo.com/3162590 #toc

The guys at MOTO labs have hacked together a prototype showing Google's Android operating system running on an e-ink display:

At TOC: Video from Yesterday's Kindle Announcement

Andrew Savikas
February 10, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Courtesy of Phil Torrone at makezine.com, here's video from yesterday's Kindle announcement:

At TOC: A Different Way of Doing Booth Books

Andrew Savikas
February 9, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (4) | Listen

At most of our conferences, we sell books from our booth, and last year's TOC Conference was no exception. This year we're trying something a bit different -- including a way to browse those books virtually:

• Test drive the Espresso Book Machine. Near the O'Reilly booth we've arranged a very special debut of the 2nd-generation EBM, and pre-loaded it with about 10 O'Reilly titles (including keynoter Jeff Jarvis' new book, What Would Google Do?, and a special "Best of TOC" compilation of some of the best writing from the past year about the future of publishing from our blog and around the Web.) You can buy any of the available titles, and have it printed on the spot. We did our best to pick titles that were well-suited to the Espresso.
• Try all the books on Safari. You'll hear a lot about digital books and reading at TOC, and while standalone ebooks and devices are a hot topic, Safari Books Online has been delivering subscription-based access to digital books for nearly a decade. We've set up something special for TOC attendees, and started off your virtual "bookshelf" with 10 of the titles on display at the O'Reilly booth. It's a chance to experience a successful digital delivery model (now on your mobile phone too) while exploring thousands of books, videos, and articles.

The EBM is brand new, so thanks in advance for your patience when checking it out -- it'll be on display next to the O'Reilly booth in the exhibitor room next to the main ballroom. The exhibit space is open from 10 am - 4 pm on Tuesday (plus the exhibitor reception from 6-7:30 pm), and then 10am - 5pm on Wednesday.

At TOC: Drawing for Pre-loaded Sony Reader Signed by Tim O'Reilly

Andrew Savikas
February 9, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Though much of the ebook buzz today has been around Kindle and Plastic Logic, the Sony Reader has a real following, and the company's new touch-screen version is by far the most elegant-looking reader I've come across (check out this session on Wednesday for a look at the device landscape). Because Sony (wisely) supports EPUB natively, it's a great fit with our ebook bundles.

Sony has kindly donated a PRS-700 for the TOC Conference, and to celebrate crossing the 400-title milestone for titles available as ebook bundles today, we're giving it away, pre-loaded with as many of them as I can fit on an 8GB SD card in EPUB format, and signed by Tim O'Reilly. Here's a photo of the reader:

That's more than $12,000 in ebooks! All paid TOC attendees (sorry speakers, press, and staff) are eligible, and we'll announce the winner on Wednesday (you must be present to win).

Amazon Announces Kindle 2

Mac Slocum
February 9, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

I've got just enough time between TOC tutorial sessions for a quick Kindle 2 post.

As anticipated, Amazon unveiled Kindle 2 this morning. The $359 update is thinner (0.36 inches) and lighter (10 ounces) than the original Kindle. It also includes updated navigation, more storage (2GB; approximately 1,500 titles) and a screen capable of handling 16 shades of gray. Kindle 2 will be released on Feb. 24.

The one feature that really caught my eye is the Kindle's new text-to-speech function:

You can switch back and forth between reading and listening, and your spot is automatically saved. Pages automatically turn while the content is being read, so you can listen hands-free.

Engadget and CNET live-blogged the announcement.

Related Stories:

• Amazon Dropping Non-Amazon Ebook Formats (Sort of)
• The Pitfalls of Publishing's E-Reader Guessing Game
• What Would Your Ideal E-Reader Look Like?
• Newsweek (11/07): "The Future of Reading"

Safari Books Online Goes Mobile

Allen Noren
February 9, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (9) | Listen

Like much of the publishing world, I'm eager to hear about Amazon's latest version of the Kindle. But that's not the only news today. I'm sitting here at TOC and talking to John Chodacki from Safari Books Online and, with a smile on his face, he's showing me beta version of m.safaribooksonline.com. (In full disclosure, Safari is a joint venture between O'Reilly and Pearson.)

The smile is well deserved. It looks great, it's fast, and I love the stripped-down navigation and lack of clutter. It's got a couple of bugs, and I don't like that I can't read our highly designed Head First books, but it's a Beta.

The mobile version will be released on 23 February, and if you're a Safari subscriber and have feedback, send it to safarimobile AT safaribooksonline DOT com. If you're not already a subscriber, you can get a free trial.

Computerworld: The Coming Ebook Revolution

Andrew Savikas
February 7, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (2) | Listen

Last week I linked to a phenomenal piece over on ArsTechnica on the future of digital books (and in the process neglected to thank Peter Brantley for the link). Today Mike Shatzkin (a co-author on the StartWithXML Report) passed along a pointer to another great article, this one from Computerworld's Mike Elgan listing six reasons that ebooks are about to explode . His reason #5 mirrors the theme of this year's TOC Conference, which starts on Monday:

5. A rise in books written for electronic reading. The shift from print to electronic will change the nature of the book itself. Many books will be shorter. They'll be more timely and culturally relevant. They'll be more colorfully and engagingly written. And they'll go after young readers like nothing before.

Elgan left off what I believe is the most important aspect of writing for electronic reading, which is hyperlinking, but the thrust here is that all publishing is becoming digital publishing, and existing publishers ignore or delay dealing with this at their peril. Or as Elgan puts it:

Like the move from silent pictures to "talkies," the transition to electronic publishing will prove fatal to laggards. Those aggressively pursuing and developing e-books will rise to take control of the publishing industry.

I agree completely, and am reminded of a line from Michael Porter's seminal article, Industry Transformation:

Because early experiments can be highly influential, companies that hope to be eventual industry leaders must think carefully about the precedents they set during this period.

Related Stories:

• Ars Technica: "The once and future e-book: on reading in the digital age"
• Digital Experiments and Useful Analytics Must Go Hand-in-Hand
• Newspapers Pursued New Tech with Wrong Intentions

Google Opens Mobile Access to Public-Domain Books

Andrew Savikas
February 5, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (2) | Listen

Via a Google press release, word that visiting books.google.com/m provides mobile access to 1.5 million public-domain books from within Google Book Search:

Today, we're making it possible for anyone with an Android or an iPhone to find and read more than 1.5 million public domain books in the US (more than half a million outside the US) in the Google Book Search index for free on their mobile phone, from anywhere with Internet access. It's possible for a commuter on a passenger train to read classics like Pride and Prejudice right along with lesser known works like Novels and Letters of Jane Austen, or for a student in India to read Shakespeare's "Hamlet" on her iPhone, all via a simple website accessible from your mobile phone.

So far, the mobile edition only offers browser-based access (Web-style scrolling, no offline access, no remember-my-place), but an interesting addition to the emerging and important mobile reading space. Screenshot below (or click here if you can't see the screenshot).

Google will be at next week's TOC Conference talking about the past, present and future of GBS.

Related Stories:

• ReadWriteWeb: "Google Book Search Goes Mobile"
• Connecting the Dots Between Google Book Search and Android
• Reaction to Google Book Search Settlement
• Magazines Now in Google Book Search
• Google Book Search: It's All About the Index

Popping the Hood on the iPhone Missing Manual App

Andrew Savikas
February 4, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (2) | Listen

Over on Teleread, Chris Meadows has a nice review of our iPhone Missing Manual app, which echoes several other reviewers (and my own personal experience with the app):

How helpful is the book? I have already found a lot of remarkably useful information just in the space of a few chapters. It would be no exaggeration to say I learned things over the course of a couple of hours of reading that I never learned in months of iPod Touch ownership.

But the neatest part of the review is the tutorial Chris provides for popping the app open and getting at the EPUB content inside:

Once you've unzipped it, it can be read in ePub-reading software such as Adobe Digital Editions (looks flawless) or FBReader (formatting a bit messed up), or even synced into the iPhone version of Stanza by sharing from Stanza Desktop. (Though as the book is almost 9 megabytes in size thanks to all the illustrations, the Stanza app may choke and require a reboot the first time you load it, but after that it opens fine. I suspect the wrapper version of Stanza is optimized for the book's large size.)

Chris is right that the electronic version available from oreilly.com is $24.99, compared with the $9.99 app (on sale right now for $4.99 in conjunction with the TOC Conference), though our "ebook bundle" includes EPUB, PDF, and Mobipocket formats, along with free updates. That said, we're tracking sales and price data across formats and platforms, because it's clearly a critical issue. The App Store has provided an easy way to measure price elasticity of demand, and that's just with one app!

Related Stories:

• Format Comparison: PDF, EPUB, and Mobi Downloads from Ebook Bundles
• Extraordinary Piece on the Future (and Past) of Digital Books
• Ebook Format Primer
• iPhone App Outperforms Most Print (Computer) Books This Holiday Season
• Pricing Digital Book Content: Where's the Sweet Spot?